Always looking and sharing the best practices in the marketing industry

Oct 15, 2011

Ben & Jerry's Mooved by Occupy Wall Street Protests

This is a nice move a brand that makes a stand against the greedy ones, because it is in the Brand DNA

To those who Occupy: We stand with you.

We, the Ben & Jerry’s Board of Directors, compelled by our personal
convictions and our Company’s mission and values, wish to express our
deepest admiration to all of you who have initiated the non-violent
Occupy Wall Street Movement and to those around the country who have
joined in solidarity. The issues raised are of fundamental importance
to all of us. These include:

The inequity that exists between classes in our country is simply immoral.

We are in an unemployment crisis. Almost 14 million people
are unemployed. Nearly 20% of African American men are unemployed.
Over 25% of our nation’s youth are unemployed.

Many workers who have jobs have to work 2 or 3 of them just to scrape by.

Higher education is almost impossible to obtain without going deeply in debt.

Corporations are permitted to spend unlimited resources to
influence elections while stockpiling a trillion dollars rather than
hiring people.

We know the media will either ignore you or frame the issue as to who
may be getting pepper sprayed rather than addressing the despair and
hardships borne by so many, or accurately conveying what this movement
is about. All this goes on while corporate profits continue to soar and
millionaires whine about paying a bit more in taxes. And we have not
even mentioned the environment.

We know that words are relatively easy but we wanted to act quickly to
demonstrate our support. As a board and as a company we have actively
been involved with these issues for years but your efforts have put them
out front in a way we have not been able to do. We have provided
support to citizens’ efforts to rein in corporate money in politics, we
pay a livable wage to our employees, we directly support family farms
and we are working to source fairly traded ingredients for all our
products. But we realize that Occupy Wall Street is calling for systemic
change. We support this call to action and are honored to join you in
this call to take back our nation and democracy.